The present invention relates to a low flight method for automatic course determination when approaching a given target site.
Modern combat aircraft are often given the task to approach, from a initial start point, a given target site automatically to the extent possible, and this must be done, to the extent possible, without directly flying over terrain elevations where there is danger that the aircraft is discovered more easily or enters the area of enemy defense measures. Accordingly, the optimum flight path follows the course of clefts in the terrain, and the aircraft should be forced to fly over elevated terrain formations directly only when there are no possibilities of lateral evasion of lower elevation, as for instance in the case of relatively long cross-lying mountain ranges. In addition, such an aircraft should make as little use as possible of a far-reaching radar, because thereby, too, it can be detected more easily. Now the current practice is, for example, in the case of missiles, to make use of the fact that the terrain to be strafed is known as to its formation from topographic maps or by serial reconnaissance. The missile is then made to carry a memory in which this terrain is stored digitally as dots or points.